Rose Bowl Parade--Pasadena, California 1956

Robert Frank captured this image of the Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena, California. It’s a photograph, of course, not a painting, but I’m always curious to see how artists see, how they frame a shot or lay down a mark. Look at the crowd. The figures, dense and tight together. There’s something so raw and intimate about the way Frank has captured them; they’re almost bursting out of the frame. It feels like he’s trying to get at something deeper about American identity, the way we gather, the things we celebrate. What was Frank thinking when he took this photo? Was he trying to capture the energy, the chaos, or something else entirely? Frank was doing something similar to what Abstract Expressionists were doing in paint - trying to capture the feeling, energy, and experience of being alive in the world. Artists are always talking to each other, across time, through their images. And so we are all able to interpret and reinterpret.